Climate Change

Climate change is a literally a 'hot topic'. The consensus of scientific opinion is that human activity is having an effect on climate. The thinking is that the use of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a 'greenhouse' gas and increasing levels of carbon dioxide lead to increasing global temperatures. The effect of this temperature increase is to bring about a number of changes - for example, melting ice caps, more frequent storms, wetter winters and dryer summers. If we accept that climate change is happening there are two ways in which we need to respond.

The first is what is known as 'mitigation'. This is taking action to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There are basically two ways of doing this. One is to use lees energy, the other to substitute 'low carbon' energy for fossil fuels. Clearly, a combination of the two will be most effective.

The second response to climate change is 'adaptation' or learning to live with the effects of climate change. Even if we are incredibly successful in reducing our contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, there will still be effects of climate change that we need to live with - warmer summers, increased flooding, rising sea level.

In practice, organisations need to address both mitigation and adaptation.

JPC can provide practical support to organisations that want to address climate change.

Services offered by JPC:

• Strategic reviews

• Climate change workshops

• Services to deliver climate change strategies & programmes

• Support to those in Climate Change Agreements

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